One thing
no one can accuse The Pilling Report of being is lightweight. It’s substantial
enough that it’s going to take a while for most of us to come to a proper mind about its contents. However, I admit that my reading of
the report has been affected by the fatigue induced by 'committee speak' and that
awful wave of nausea generated by the feeling that straight cis people are trying
to get their heads about ‘us’ again. So, please take the following comments
with caution. I may have missed the point entirely. I know I can be a contumacious priest who says intemperate things, That is not my intention. I just want to get beneath some of the presenting headlines.
So, I want to reflect on one small aspect of the report that leapt out to
me - its brief comments on trans people. In some ways they seem of marginal interest to the headline stuff – the ‘gay
blessings’ stuff – and yet, I suspect, they indicates just how very far the
church (and indeed perhaps wider society) has to travel towards respect, love
and affirmation of queer people.
The two
paragraphs of interest (I've come across thus far!) run as follows:
‘The
issues raised by the transgendered people we met were not primarily about
sexuality as such, but about feelings of shame and exclusion in relation to
gender.’
&
‘This
report focuses on questions concerning same sex relationships. However, the
group believes that the experiences of those with transgender or intersex
conditions raise important theological and pastoral issues. Some of these
issues were outlined in chapter 7 of 2003 House of Bishops report Some issues
in human sexuality and the Church of England needs to address them.’
Pilling
uses the latter paragraph to help narrow the purview of the report. At one
level, this is understandable. The report is already vast and Pilling wants to
keep the attention on sex relationships. There is also much to be said in
favour of clarifying terms. And, I guess, from the point of view of dealing
with a massively divisive matter within the church, the move in this paragraph
permits the authors (and the church) to postpone trans and intersex discussions
to another time. However…
However,
I’m currently struggling to properly comprehend the meaning and implications of
these two seemingly insignificant paragraphs. I suspect this is to do with the
fact that I was one of the trans* people Pilling ‘listened to’ as part of its
process. I cannot speak for other trans people involved in the process, but I don’t quite recognize the substance of the discussion I took part in in the
phrase ‘The issues raised by the transgendered people we met were…about
feelings of shame and exclusion in relation to gender.’ I’m not even sure what
that phrase means. ‘Shame’ is a powerful word which gestures towards an experience common among those who have been abused or belittled. So perhaps the phrase
means, ‘Trans people raised issues about being made to feel ashamed about being
‘differently’ gendered within the church.’ And indeed the silencing of and
shaming of trans people on grounds of being trans does happen in the church.
Yet, my
memory of the conversation I took part in – and I have a notoriously dodgy
memory! – has a different feel to the one gestured towards by the comment above. The conversation I remember took very seriously the reality that being gendered
bodies – trans or cis – is the theatre and ground for our sexual lives. Being trans
(as with being intersex) has profound implications for how one figures one’s
sexuality and is left to negotiate the minefields of church perceptions of
terms like ‘orientation’ or ‘sexual politics’ or ‘sexual ethics’. That is, while being
trans has massive implications for how one is perceived as a gendered being, it also has massive implications for how one's sexuality is figured.
Perhaps
then I’m just being a little precious about how matters significant to a tiny
group (which includes me) have seemingly been reduced to one slightly opaque
sentence and a follow-up paragraph. Maybe that’s it. But it may just be
something else.
When
Pilling says, ‘The group believes that the experiences of those with
transgender or intersex conditions raise important theological and pastoral
issues…and the Church of England needs to address them,’ I wonder if it quite
comprehends what it’s saying.
It is
noteworthy that Pilling treats trans* and intersex as ‘conditions’. The use of
that term does tend to set off my ‘pathologizing’ klaxon. That is to say, in
talking of ‘conditions’ one has already placed trans* and intersex in the
categories of medical pathologies, measured against a normative standard (I
guess, gender dimorphism). I appreciate that many will argue that placing trans
and intersex in discourses of ‘variance’, ‘illness’ etc is an appropriate move.
It is certainly a common one. I only want to flag up here that such a move is
an increasingly disputed one and the fact that Pilling deploys the term without
scare quotes indicates how very far we are yet to come in appreciating the
implications of difference for our understanding of human being/s.
However, if
we park that point for a moment, my instinct is that the ‘theological and
pastoral issues’ raised by, e.g., the existence of trans folk are precisely those
which deserves not to be hived off, but must be brought closer to the centre.
For what it means to be intersex or trans (and therefore for what it means to
be ‘cis’) will increasingly become the focal points for our future
understandings of what it means to be ‘desiring’ creatures. For – as Pilling
rightly flags up – we are embodied and incarnated beings. We are bodies. Not
mere flesh or meat, but bodies nonetheless. Surely if we are to begin to come
to any sort of fullness in our understanding of sexual selves, we must return
again and again to the body (of Christ?), to bodies and embodiment. And if we
do that, trans and intersex folk and the ‘pastoral and theological issues’
(‘issues’?) we raise will not be elided and redacted away but reveal more about
the story of God and us.